BACOLOD CITY — The presence of 85 percent of the city’s policemen on the streets of Bacolod to render duty has consistently brought down the number of crimes in the city in the past eight months.
Senior Supt. Francisco, acting director of Bacolod City Police, on Thursday said the implementation of enhanced managing police operations, which includes police visibility on the streets, has resulted in lower crime volume.
“My instruction to the station commanders is, 85 percent of the personnel should be on the streets, and the rest will perform administration functions,” Ebreo said during a briefing on the city’s crime environment.
Total crime volume in Bacolod decreased by 10.83 percent from November 25, 2017 to March 4, 2018, based on the earlier figures released by the police.
In the first half of 2018, the city’s crime volume dropped by 20.83 percent to only 1,486 cases from the previous year’s 1,877.
The eight focus crimes including murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft, carnapping and stealing of motorcycles, also known as index crimes or crimes against persons and property, decreased by 39.9 percent from January to June this year.
The said crime incidents declined from 604 cases in the first half of 2017 to only 363 for the same period in 2018.
From July 1 to 24 this year, total crime volume decreased by 32.24 percent to only 145 incidents compared to the previous year’s 214 for the same period.
Ebreo said Bacolod police personnel follow a “12 hours duty, 12 hours off” schedule, which is an adjustment to the 24 hours straight duty they previously rendered.
“Our initial objective was to address the crime volume, and we have seen that the crime incidents really went down in the past eight months that’s why we also adjusted the duty scheme of our personnel,” Ebreo said.
He noted though that unforeseen circumstances would sometimes require policemen to be pulled out from their street patrol duties.
“It’s the discretion of the station commander. As long as they can justify the number of personnel they deploy, I don’t see a problem with it,” he added.
Ebreo said the deployment schedule varies, depending on the time crimes are usually being committed, and where these crimes happen.
Bacolod City has 10 police stations with 36 police commissioned officers, 608 police non-commissioned officers and 101 augmentation personnel. (Nanette Guadalquiver/PNA)
